After last session’s discussion on species concepts/definitions, people thought it might be worthwhile talking about species from a taxonomist’s point of view. There aren’t many papers I know of that talk about the taxonomic process, but if people have questions I’ll be happy to answer what I can from my experiences.

However, I did find a paper that I think does a good job of discussing some of the issues that were brought up last time, and introduces a few more ideas on what a species is from a taxonomists viewpoint, and how that viewpoint differs between individuals:

Anyways, Vane-Wright discusses the nomenclatural plight of a group of African butterflies and how definitions of the species of interest have changed through time and with differing research opinions/objectives. Everything from creationism to cladism is discussed, and the author proposes a new hierarchical system that only serves to complicate matters in my mind. I think it should be a pretty interesting discussion, and I’m looking forward to hearing what everyone else thinks of it.

P.S. There was some discussion about how taxonomy can affect conservation last time as well, so I thought I’d point people to this paper which does a nice job of discussing the issue:

Mace, G.M. 2004. The role of taxonomy in species conservation. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences 359: 711-719. doi:10.1098/rstb.2003.1454 (PDF here)

As if on cue, Nature published a short Correspondence letter this week which talks about the effect that species splitting is having on mammal conservation. You can read it online here (paywall, so also here).

Personally, I don’t really like it when someone says we should be stemming our research to fit political ideals, and feel that the authors are just trying to get other taxonomists to conform to their own ideas of what a species is. It is interesting to see how the Biological Species Concept is pitted against Phylogenetic Species Concepts however, and it’s clear that some people are not as open to hybrid definitions/concepts like we discussed earlier this week.

What do you think? Should we restrict changing species concepts of threatened species, or are there other ways to approach this problem without throwing taxonomy under the bus?Zachos F.E. (2013). Taxonomy: Species splitting puts conservation at risk, Nature, 494 (7435) 35-35. DOI: 10.1038/494035c